Suck, In Fragments
by AshNapalm
Summary: Finding your soulmate in a hospital was just all sorts of fucking wrong. SteveBucky, TonyBruce
1. Chapter 1

**disclaimer: I do not own anything Marvel and do not profit from this work.**

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><p>Bucky Barnes hated his life, and he hated that it was taking so long to be over.<p>

Pop-culture media made cancer out to be romantic, a slow-moving death that either faded away in time to save the final breath, or swept over its victim like a dark, comforting blanket of quiet oblivion, with enough time for tender goodbyes and sweet kisses and to be finished with the world by the time it was over.

At thirty-one, Bucky was nowhere near finished with the world. But he sat on the bed the hospital staff had banished him to, the blinds of his window perpetually closed, his arm perpetually missing, and his mother perpetually absent. Because last month he had screamed in her face, his voice and words nothing but uninhibited rage as he venomously informed her of how much he hated her, how utterly useless she was and had always been, how horrible of a mother she had turned out to be, to just _get the fuck out_ because he had never wanted her there and didn't want her there now.

And the last thing he had seen of her was her face wrenched in sorrow and rejection, eyes struggling with tears she hadn't let fall, and the back her blonde head as she did as he said and disappeared through the door.

"Knock, knock!" A cheerful voice called out. The scowl was already in place as his nurse, happy as always, peaked through the door. Sharon – she was nice enough, as nurses went, but he was so damn _tired _of nice already. "Good morning, James! I'm glad you're up. I have your roommate here." Roommate. And wasn't that the final nail in the coffin? "He's eager to get settled in and meet you. You wanna come in, sweetheart?" The last part was aimed behind her, and Bucky snorted as she turned. _Sweetheart? _They had said the guy was twenty-seven, a little old to be called _sweetheart_ by a nurse younger than that. What was he, crippled? Close to death? She never called Bucky s_weetheart_, though.

When the guy walked through the door, however, Bucky immediately understood, because Lord strike him down if the person shuffling nervously in front of him was a day over seventeen, let alone nearing thirty.

The kid (because that was what he was, honestly) was small, at least half-a-foot shorter than Bucky, if not more. He was skinny as _fuck, _skin clinging tight to his bones in the shade of white that only came from being out of the sun and on medications for too long. His head was utterly bare, not even a scratch of growing stubble, his blue eyes childishly huge on his sunken face.

"Hey," he greeted, soft and warm, and Sharon's tinkling laughter covered Bucky's scoff as she lightly pressed the kid's shoulders, aiming him toward the second bed.

"Adorable," she proclaimed. "Why don't you get settled, honey, while I go get your IV and meds straightened out? James here won't bite you, much as he looks it. Will you, James?" She shot him a look out of the corner of her eye, half-teasing and half-warning, but skipped out the door before he could snap at her, smart one that she was (had learned to be, he was proud of that), shutting the door quietly behind her and leaving them to the beeping of Bucky's heart monitor.

_"Adorable," _Bucky mocked immediately, a hard sneer to his tone as he leveled the kid with a look of his own. He hadn't asked for a roommate, hadn't wanted and still _didn't_ want one, but when you were one arm short, living off of government aid, and _fucking dying, _no one gave a damn about your need for privacy. A bed was a bed and a room was a room and tough shit.

He expected the kid to flush, or to stammer, or to get the hint and just stop _looking _at him already, but instead smirk pulled across the other's lips, snappy and _hard, _his eyes lighting with something that was familiar to look at.

"Life sucks, yeah? I get it." He chuckled harshly as he shed his jacket to the bed. His arms were stick-thin, Jesus, but he thrust one out anyway, what was left of its muscle straining against gravity to keep it in the air as he approached the bed. "Steve Rogers, transfer from SHIELD Medical, normally blonde, leukemia relapse. It's a bitch. You?"

The kid's – Steve's – hand hovered pointedly in front of Bucky's face, shaking but unrelenting in its goal to stay up. He could see it was an effort, the way Steve's jaw was clenching, the tightening around his eyes. He reminded Bucky of his comrades overseas, all guts eve if there was nothing to back it. Steve was smaller than any of them, but he stood in such a fashion that Bucky reached out for his hand without a snarky retort.

"Ja-"

Their hands clasped and it hit.

It was nothing like his mother had told him and everything like his buddies in the war had described. A searing ache of fire across his lacking shoulder like a bullet from an enemy gun through the meat of his muscle. He could feel every inch of the name being burned into his skin like a signature and it _hurt worse than death _but it soft, too. His mind was racing with a jumbled mess of reactions he couldn't sort, because over it he could hear Steve's startled, pained hiss as the action echoed on him, and Bucky looked up just in time to see Steve falter under the sensation, stumbling forward into the railing of Bucky's bed, and he didn't stop to think before he reached out, catching him with his one good arm.

His throat clenched suffocatingly tight at realization of how easily the smaller man fit against him.

His soulmate.

"Fate's a _fucking whore_," he muttered in wonderment.

"Wha-what does it say?" Steve demanded, sucking in hurried, shallow breaths as he chased after enough oxygen to settle himself, burrowed tight and desperate into his chest. _"What does it say? What does it say?"_

"I'm James," he answered immediately, running the fingers of his one good hand directly under where he knew Steve bore his name. God, why _now?_ He wanted to scream, push Steve off, but he couldn't let go. Why now? Why not _before?_ Christ, he could have had years of this, _they _could have had years of this. "Call me Bucky."


	2. Chapter 2

Stark Center was supposed to have been a good, quiet place to die.

The hospital was private, but well-funded – it branched out into a secluded part of the outer skirts of upper Manhattan, surrounded mostly by trees and grass and other wondrous aspects of nature the state wasn't really recognized for having that even the massive parking lots hadn't managed to destroy. The hospital was notorious for only taking in and catering to the most ill of patients, ones deemed too sick to treat by other facilities, and though he admired that, it had actually been the gardens he had been most looking forward to seeing – a walled-off section of the grounds opened solely to the patients and attending nurses, filled with an array of exotic flowers of every possible color that thrived under the therapeutic shade of the screened dome that capped it.

When Fury had approached him in his bed in SHIELD last week with an ominous, defeated expression, all Steve had been able to think about was that Stark Center, secluded and surrounded by those beautiful flowers in that peaceful setting, would be a good place to live out the rest of his now-numbered days.

He hadn't even given a thought to the possibility of meeting his_ soulmate _inside of that building.

Bucky. Christ, Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes, thirty-one and worn down and, as Nurse Sharon had warned while leading him to his new room, "a bit of an ass, Steve". The man who was supposed to have just been his roommate, whose name was now etched across his shoulder, who now wore Steve's name impressed on his own.

Clasping hands with Bucky, feeling the surge of a bond reaching to anchor between them, had licked a fire alive in Steve's gut. Bucky was all snark and snip and temper, but the eyes that had locked with his own had been fearful, the strong arm that had locked him to his chest desperate. "Fate's a fucking whore", Bucky had said, but Steve was pretty sure it was life that had screwed them over, the bitch. He hadn't felt this alive in three years – just in time to die and lose it all, no matter the fight.

Ironically, though, he hadn't been wrong. The garden, the reason he had chosen Stark Center at all, was beautiful. So incredibly different from SHIELD.

He wondered if Bucky ever came out here, ever walked around or sat down to enjoy the array of flowers, or if he even liked flowers, and felt an immediate response of churning coldness in his gut.

His soulmate, and he didn't even know anything about him.

There was an empty, cushioned bench near the upper corner, almost hidden under the low branches of a prideful tree, not too far from the doors but back enough that they couldn't really be seen, and Steve practically fell into it, the IV pole stopping just at the edge of the cement pathway. His lungs were burning and he hated it, the faint wheezing whistles pushing from his chest, the exhaustion that was already consuming him. He wasn't prone to moments of self-pity so much anymore, not after this long, but just, right then … _it wasn't fair_. It wasn't fair that he was sick, that Bucky was sick, that Bucky was his soulmate and that they had met _here_, in a _hospita_l, in a hospital where he had come to _die-_

"Hey, uh… is it alright if I, uh, sit here?"

The voice was soft and tentative and jolted Steve's head up to the sight of a stranger.

The man was older than Steve, that much was obvious, though whether that obviousness was due to nature or to the worn look of illness was an unanswerable question to any but him. His t-shirt and grey-scrub pants combo matched Steve's, exposing arms of sickened bruises and frail skin. But the eyes that met his own were a warm brown that smiled more than his lips, which twitched in anxious quirks of a timid grin that wasn't sure if it wanted to come out or not.

"Sorry," the man continued, still soft and cautious. "It's just, sorry, I have a procedure in an hour, and this bench is the closest one to the doors. I'm sorry, I know it's weird-."

"No, hey, it's fine," Steve cut off, mind stumbling over the rapid amount of apologies even as he forced his body to move over to make room. The other man blinked, words dying abruptly as a small, barely-there grin finally managed to force itself out as he slowly took the proffered seat, seeming to push himself as close to the edge as possible, as if he wasn't worthy of sharing it at all. Something about it unsettled Steve's stomach, made his jaw clench at the implications, because they were all already sick, they shouldn't feel worthless as human beings on top of it. And this man, older than him but just as unfortunate, looked as though he was honestly so damn sorry for burdening Steve with his presence, for introducing him to his existence at all. He was taller, bigger as so many were, but Steve reached out his hand in carefully slow motion, stopping only when the stranger's eyes locked on his fingers. "I'm Steve. Rogers."

His head tilted, shyness disappearing to old-wound suspicion as he inspected the offering. Steve hated the way his hand shook, hanging unsupported in midair, but just like with Bucky he kept it out – _you never take back a promise, Steven – _trying to keep his fingers as still as possible as the man studied him and what he asked.

"You think it's a good idea to make friends in a place like this?" It wasn't said half as apologetic as the words before, just the smallest tremor of uncertainty, but more dry humor than anything. It made Steve smirk, because the bland doubtfulness was exactly what his mind had played out in imagining what the final stretch would hold, and it fell out of this man's mouth perfectly. His expression, apparently, was enough of an answer, because the man shook his head with an amused huff.

"Bruce Banner," he replied, and latched his hand to Steve's.

It was different than with Bucky.

The brand of his soulmate had seared like fire across his shoulder, nothing short of the pain of an actual branding burn that had sucked out his breath and left him weak and sorrowful. This, however, swirled like the gentle warmth of a cloudy morning sunray, wrapping around his wrist in a safe, comforting hold. Air swelled gently in his lungs, the inhalation of a warm summer breeze, and for the first time in years he felt like he could stand, a strength surging into his bones that he had never experienced, and it felt good, it felt _great-_

"Son of a bitch," the man – Bruce – was gasping out, sounding a little more alive than before. A little … angry. "Son of a bitch, son of a _bitch_."

"I'm sorry," Steve echoed, pulling back,_ this was a nightmare, he was drugged and still at SHIELD,_ but Bruce's grip was deceptively strong, keeping his smaller hand trapped and close.

"Don't," the older growled. "Just, shit, don't apologize. It's not- this isn't your fault. I'm sorry, just please don't-."

"It's not your fault either," Steve snapped back, and finally he locked down at his wrist. Sure enough, there it was, curled like a falling bracelet and as permanent as a scar, _Bruce_ spiraled in silver lettering that glittered under the tree's filtered sun. _Platonic_. He barked out harsh, disbelieving laughter. "First Bucky, and now you. I've been here less than three hours." _I shouldn't have come at all._

"Bucky?" Bruce was studying their grip still – Steve could barely make out the brown of his eyes darting back and forth between Steve's new mark and his own – but his fingers relaxed just enough that they were no longer entrapping. He didn't pull away. "You mean James? Uh, Barnes, right?"

"My roommate, and my full _soulmate_, as of two hours ago." He shrugged, an image of Bucky's pained, defeated and angry eyes flashing through his mind. "Guess God decided I needed to experience a complete set before I kicked it."

"Sucks," Bruce intoned with a cringe, echoing his sentiments, and slowly retracted his grip, keeping his eye on the mark in anguished awe. "I'm sorry."

"I know. You say that a lot," he returned sardonically, shoving Bucky aside, grinning a little when Bruce finally met his gaze and slowly returned it. "Haven't, uh, met yours then yet?" His platonic shook his head.

"No." The smile turned a little sad. "Sorta hoping I don't, actually. There's … seriously no hope for me with this." He blanched. "I don't, you know, want them to have to experience it. Better to have not had, than to have and lost. Or something."

"I hear you." Steve kicked his IV pole gently, just to hear the rattle, belatedly realizing Bruce didn't have one. He hadn't been paying attention, not really. Hadn't been paying attention to a lot of things, lately; hadn't cared, didn't care. Should he even care about this?

"Rogers!" A voice called out from the building's doors. His head whipped around, startled, to the sight an expectant nurse propping one open, clipboard in his hand and eyes searching. He stood on reflex, years of manners drilled into his head in his mother's warm, stern voice, and stumbled back just as quickly in head rush.

Bruce caught him.

"Easy," the other man murmured in his ear. "Fainting before tests don't make them any easier." A low, bitter chuckle. "I've tried."

"Me too." The nurse had caught sight of him, eyebrows raised in inquiry, and he grabbed for his pole. Bruce hesitated in removing his support.

"I didn't necessarily want friends," he admitted, "but you're not so bad. I'm in room 2012 on the same floor as you. It's small enough that it's a permanent single. You can, uh, stop by, if you want." Steve could practically hear the _sorry _reverberating on top of every word.

And maybe one of them should say it. Maybe Steve should have said it when Bucky was holding him, after he had burned the man's shoulder with his name, maybe he should have said it again and again after Bruce had made him stop. It felt like something that _should _be said, because _damn it._

Someone had to apologize for this.

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><p>Soothing painkillers and vitamins were making their way through the tube of his IV when they finally wheeled Bucky back in.<p>

He looked wrecked, half out of it and miserable, a sickened pale tinge to his face. There were dark rings under his eyes, his arm still very much missing, all bravado and rage gone from his face.

'_What do you need from me, Father, that you would bring us together now? Or at all?' _Steve wondered, studying his soulmate silently as the brunette twitched under his blankets.

"Steeeve?" Bucky slurred, hand moving just barely. Just barely.

He already felt warmer.

"I'm here, Bucky," he called back. "I'm right here."

_Sorry,_ he didn't say.


	3. Chapter 3

A throat cleared.

Finding your soulmate in a hospital was just all sorts of fucking wrong.

Bruce didn't really suck on the cigarette in his mouth so much as cradled it between his cracked lips, the warmth soothing the skin breaks, the embers at its opening slowly fading away into a snuffed out death he had no intention of reigniting back into life. Resuscitation; stopping death, reversing the journey, prolonging the anticipation, the preparation, the inevitable. Do not pass Go, do not collect two-hundred dollars, return to fucking Start. Whatever. He didn't see the point of it.

(Right now, they were scrambling in the back room – the machine that pushed medicine into his body to attack his sickness had broken that morning, for whatever damned reason machines broke in the twenty-first century. The techs were borderline hysterical, the doctors livid. Bruce… Bruce just rolled with it).

Death of anything was a natural occurrence. Nothing, neither human nor object, could last forever. Components would break down, structures would weaken, will and need would become exhausted. It was intended to be a relief, death. Something he had wanted, would have taken eagerly by the hand only months ago had Betty not walked into the damn room when she had –

Dark hair, fair skin, blue eyes that lit up in overwhelming joy at the slightest hint of another's happiness – Betty was the only reason he had allowed himself to be admitted to Stark Center.

Nibbling slightly at the tobacco stick, he glanced down at the hand holding the cooled lighter.

And then this had happened.

The silvery name wrapped around his wrist was two days old and still looked as fresh as it had when Steve's shaking hold had tattooed it there. _Steve_. As small and unassuming as the man himself, it still felt warm, still felt reassuring, and it made his stomach twist in unpleasant knots to know that his own name was in the exact same shape on the other man's own wrist. That wasn't how the game was supposed to be played. He was supposed to have left this world in the same way he had lived it – alone, no marks received and no marks left (damn it, Betty), and yet there it was, written by the universe itself. _Steve._

Bruce's only consolation was that Steve was as bitter and horrified about the entire thing as he was, was suffering _more _than he was. At least the two of them were platonics. But to meet your actual intended on your literal death bed. Christ. He couldn't … he couldn't do that.

Another throat cleared – or rather, the same one. Without pulling the cigarette from his mouth, Bruce slowly turned his head toward the elderly woman sitting primly in one of the dozen or so chairs decorating the waiting area, glaring at him with an expectant expression. Somewhere inside of his chest, small and desperate, little Robert Banner wanted nothing more than to stutter out however many apologies it took to get the woman's displeased look to melt away into approval; to forgive him, to like him. But Bruce wasn't Robert – Bruce was covered in bruises; Bruce was on his second day of not being hungry enough to eat; Bruce _didn't give a fuck. _He pushed the stick between his teeth and offered the woman a too-wide, too-angry smile, didn't look away until she audibly huffed in disgust and turned toward the man beside her (husband? Poor guy) to undoubtedly complain. It wasn't like he hadn't left the window open (though honest-to-God, what better place to develop cancer?).

Steve approved of his smoking, appreciated the irony, applauded the choice. Smoking caused cancer? _"We already have that."_

(Truth? Bruce didn't want friends. He had Betty, or had had Betty, and that was enough, no thank you, never again, not fucking _here._ But Steve wasn't so bad. Tiny, bald-headed, dying Steve, afflicted with leukemia that _just would not go away_, just like Bruce. Steve who didn't push, who didn't tell Bruce to _try_, didn't believe in rainbows and unicorns and whatever happily ever after Doctor Wilson kept tossing at them in group. Steve who had Bucky, who didn't want Bucky but _wanted Bucky_, who wrapped around Bruce like a warm towel and just was there. That was all, it, everything. Two days, and he was just there. What even was that?).

"Bruce?" He turned his head again, finally letting his cigarette dip down as the pretty nurse (Brenda? No. Beth?) behind the desk beamed at him. "Sorry for the delay, honey. They're ready for you now, if you want to head back."

As if he could say no, and just return to his room.

Bruce wasn't Robert, but he was still Bruce, and he nodded his thanks in a way that made Beth's (it was totally Beth) smile soften like butter as he passed.

(And if he made sure to walk as close to the woman and her husband as possible, letting the dying traces of smoke dance from his body to their noses, well … he was still Bruce).

There was a malfunctioning piece of equipment at the hospital that was baffling the fuck out of the techs, and that was how it happened.

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><p>It was revolutionary, shiny, spectacular, and was <em>actually being used for life-saving procedures, <em>so when Pepper mentioned that it was going faulty, he fucking went.

And he went in civilian clothes, thank you, complete with a billed-hat that shadowed his admittedly well-known features. The staff at the center knew who he was, of course, but the visitors didn't, and the patients didn't, and that was all that mattered, keeping himself safe from the visitors (who either wanted his autograph for celebrity lust, or wanted his money because their loved one had died in his hospital) (sometimes, _sometimes, _they wanted his help, wanted to plead the case of the patient they were visiting, beg him to make something, anything to help, and _fuck those times_, but they rarely happened, because people were still people), and keeping the patients calm (because while it was a big deal when the _owner _of the facility you were living in showed up, could mean budget cuts, which could mean _death_, and just no. The less they knew about his presence, the happier they were, the _healthier_ they were). Though he, of course, claimed it was the former.

Tony Stark did not care about strangers, what the fuck?

The machine was, thank God, not on the bottom floor – Tony avoided the Children's Ward like the plague, couldn't breathe from hearing the whimpers and sobs of the _babies_ fighting an unseen illness in agony. It was, however, in the more critical section of the Center, which was almost as bad. He shivered under the onslaught of silence, the steady beeping of heart monitors and the hiss of breathing machines. If he focused (and he didn't), he could hear the sounds of gut-wrenching vomiting, angry weeping struggling to be quiet (to be strong), the soft voices of nurses trying to comfort. He paid attention to none of it (all of it), following a tech nurse as he led the way toward the troublesome machine.

It was in a large room, with walls covered in jungle-esque scenery (seriously? Really? Who the fuck had approved that?) that contained a lot of green and no animals (small favors). Against the backdrop, the machine gleamed white in futuristic perfection, but remained silent in stubborn rebellion. The tech was babbling away, most likely repeating back everything they had already tried, but Tony was already moving toward it.

'_Alright, you fucker. Let's talk.'_

It took two hours to get the machine humming again, and he made a mental note to discuss new Stark techs with Pepper – the damn thing hadn't been hooked up right, had no foundation to support itself on, how the fuck long had patients been using it in this condition, _shit._ He gave it a few more whirls, made sure it moved and reacted accordingly (under his hand, it did, they always did, his babies), and assured the still-hovering tech nurse and newly-arrived doctor that _yes, it will work just fine now, it's perfectly safe to be used, _when another doctor came in, asking the same questions, because there was a patient needing the room for treatment, and Tony was quick to leave.

(He loved what they did here – next to his work, Stark Center was the most important thing to him. But he couldn't … he couldn't see these people. The people they helped (didn't help, couldn't save). He had to be separated from it, had to distance himself. Couldn't _touch that.)_

The universe hated him; he bumped into the guy at the doorway in his haste, and his body ignited.

It was worse than a torch burn, worse than the heat of the desert sand, worse than the shrapnel that had shoved into his chest and the subsequent hard surgery that he had been awake for, because he _didn't want it to stop_. It radiated like the sun from his shoulder, being stabbed again and again and again; he wanted to latch onto it, to drive in that knife himself – he gasped for air to keep himself going, could hear the guy in front of him gasping for the same. He stepped away, just a breath, enough to _think,_ but it was still there.

He was just a little taller than Tony, barely enough to make a real difference, but still enough that he had to look up (and he _did)_ into eyes as brown as his own, just as wide, just as anguished. His hair was short, buzzed so close to his head that it was almost non-existent; his face thin and pale and somehow still defined. Clothed in the basic cruel grey of patient scrubs that brought out the dark sets of red and purple bruising on his arms – he was nothing special to look at, _he wasn't_, but Tony could feel the engraved burning on his shoulder (_no, no, __**no**__)_, saw the man's thin hand move up to rub at his own, and that … that was it.

"Bruce?" The doctor from inside the room called out, curious and intrusive. Tony growled, _growled_, but the man, Bruce, looked over him toward the room.

"I should – I should go," he said, unsure but strong, a strong hint of cigarette smoke on his breath that made Tony heady. "Will… shit, I can't – will you-?"

"I'll be right here." He said it firmly, not thinking. But it brought a shy, distressed smile to Bruce's face, and he gave a jerky nod, stepping around him. The sudden distance felt cold, overwhelming – Bruce kept walking away.

Tony turned, watching Bruce approach the room and the machine (_the damned machine)_ with an unnatural, uncaring confidence, heard the tech nurse tsk "no IV again?" and Bruce's quiet response of "Tried, but it blew another vein. The PICC line's in. Here-." Before the door closed firmly between them.

A new nurse approached, a polite smile on his face as he offered to show Tony out, but he ignored him, instead darting toward the nearest staff bathroom and locking the door with violent desperation. The strength from his promise to Bruce washed from his face like a waterfall the moment he caught sight of his pale, slack face. With frenzied movements he would later forever deny, he knocked the hat from his head and tore at his shirt until it was tight as a rope around his neck, twisting his body until he could see the name sloppily engraved in burned black across his skin.

_Bruce._

* * *

><p>Stripped down and immobile under the machine, Bruce couldn't breathe.<p>

_Fuck, just fuck, fuck, please, why, please_


	4. Chapter 4

"Least favorite color?"

Just beneath Bucky's heart, agony ratcheted up in waves that would have been intolerable had he not been so used to them. It was as if his ribs were attempting to come together at their points, pushing his organs together in compact packing as they struggled to lock him up, protect him from further intrusion and pain. The pressure was suffocating; the slightest weight against his upper abdomen sent him reeling in a whirlpool of nausea, a punch to the gut – he wanted nothing more than to stand up, or bend over. To kneel on the floor on his hand and knees and press his forehead to the filthy tile of his room and ride it out, as he had done so many times before.

But he didn't.

Instead, he sucked his lower lip between his teeth and worried the frail skin until the sharp sting from his mouth warred with the blunt pain of his abdomen, swallowing down whimpers with words, because Steve was sitting on the next bed over, shivering beneath his scrubs in visible tremors, eyes oddly focused on Bucky's every move despite the tube slowly bleeding red liquid into his veins.

"Uh… yellow," the younger man answered, licking at his lips – he wasn't allowed to drink anything for the duration of the treatment, the already dry skin of his lips paler for it. Something jolted in Bucky's gut that he didn't let himself contemplate.

"Like, sunflower yellow? Or jaundice yellow?" He tried. Steve's face scrunched up in disgust.

"Faded butter yellow, to… be exact. Though now it's jaundice yellow, thanks. Least favorite animal?"

Another wave of pain. "Cats," he said firmly. "Fuck cats, Steve, seriously."

They had been playing this game for the entirety of the two days they had known each other, the first question of "favorite food?" from Steve's mouth setting off the endless round of questions Bucky didn't even know how to stop. Everything had quickly switched over to "least favorite" when it became apparent that there was very little Steve _didn't _like, making it near impossible for him to answer any of the questions. The other man maintained that it was a good way to pass time, a way to keep his mind occupied while the drugs worked their way into his system, but Bucky wasn't stupid enough to not see what was happening. Learning about each other, the lives they had lived that the other hadn't witnessed, the likes and dislikes of an outside world they weren't a part of, a future they wouldn't experience. They were glimpses, nothing deep, nothing too much, too holding. He wondered if Steve thought it was safer that way – if _he_ thought it was safer that way.

He wasn't sure.

"I kinda like cats." The response drew Bucky back. He watched as the thin arm the IV bled into shifted, caught the glimmer of silver writing on the equally thin wrist and swallowed, the pain clenching again at the sound of a forcefully calm breath. "I want a cigarette," Steve admitted suddenly, decisively. "And I want to smoke it."

"Thanks for clarifyin' that, really. Was worried you might wanna use it to stab me or somethin'." Steve snorted and Bucky had to bite down the urge of a too-painful laugh, settling for a strained smirk. "Cheer up, pal. Ya know Bruce'll bring ya one when he's done."

"Maybe," Steve agreed with a small, tainted smile. "If hasn't smoked them all, the addict."

Bruce, the name the silver spelled out on Steve's wrist, another distraction from that pain that wracked his body. Waking up from his tests with the expectation for Steve to have been a dream, only to see him sitting there beside him, waiting, had left his thoughts oddly fuzzy. The sight of the newly minted soulmark, platonic though it was, wrapped on his soulmate's skin had been a douse a chilled water.

(It was hard to tell who felt worse about the occurrence – him, Steve, or _Bruce Banner_. They all knew what it was, finding your soulmate after your death warrant had been placed in your hand, already dated and signed. Pathetic, hopeless – a bullet to the chest when there was already a noose around your neck – something you didn't want, or want to bestow. Banner had amplified guilt to Steve's misery yesterday when they had finally met, and Bucky had choked on it. Not jealousy, just … sorrow. Pain. He and Banner both in agreement in that – Steve would suffer twice over).

He opened his mouth, preparing to fire out another question (any stupid, pointless question), when a sharp, questioning rap of knuckles echoed along the wood of their door. Steve's tiny body jolted in surprise, a flare of resulting pain in his eyes that Bucky could practically _feel _as he shot over a curious look. It wasn't time for his treatment to end yet – another two fucking hours to go of it – so it wasn't Sharon at the door.

"_What?"_ Bucky grouched loudly, ignoring the pointed glare Steve's expression took on as the latch clicked and the door slowly cracked open.

Doctor Wilson's head popped in, eternally friendly eyes instantly landing on their faces as a sly smile began to beam on his own.

"Great, you guys are awake. You up for a visitor, Steve? James? I promise he'll behave." The door opened the rest of the way before either of them could reply, revealing Banner's disheveled form shielded behind him. "Seriously, he's completely out of energy. Totally trashed out the rec room _and _my office. Nurse Sharon will bring his IV pole around in a bit. He'll be good. Right, Banner?" There was no threat in Wilson's words as he directed them at the quiet man, just the same old gentle understanding the doctor was famous for, and yet Banner didn't look up, or say anything at all.

"Bruce?" Steve was struggling to push himself up, face morphing into a frown that both concerned and pain, and Bucky leapt at the chance, jumping carefully from his bed to push the younger man back down. The stab in his abdomen lessened slightly enough for a breath of easy air as he moved toward the door.

"Banner, get in here," he barked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder pointedly as he level Wilson with a look. "_You._ We're good. Go." He stepped aside enough to let the other patient through, eyes narrowing as the doctor shook his head with a smile, already stepping away. Bucky shut the door without so much as a by-your-leave, turning back to his acquired soulmate and the man curled tightly into the recliner resting between their beds.

Trembling, held together by pieces and threads.

"Bruce?" Steve questioned again, tentative and soft. Banner looked up, and it was then that Bucky noticed the burn of red that had inundated the white of his eyes, the exhausted turn of his mouth that twitched in spasms of want and something he couldn't name.

"I-is that Red Devil?" He waved toward the bag of red above Steve's head, his voice as rough as the Afghan desert. He visibly swallowed in a way that had to hurt like hell, left him gasping a bit even as he shoved out more words. "Really?"

"No. It's a variant. Experimental," Steve answered before Bucky could, but was shaking his head. "Stop stalling, Bruce. What's going on?"

Banner was still shaking, violent minute shivers that reverberated up his arms and across his shoulders and down his body. In his scrubs, arms bruised and body pale, he looked enough like Steve to pass for an older brother, a future reflection of nonexistent time. The same forceful breaths, the same attempt to be _better than this_.

"I … I didn't realize it would hurt, like it did," the older man whispered, and somehow Bucky knew what he was talking about even as his hand reached for his shoulder.

"Fuck," he whispered, twining with Steve's whimper.

"God, Bruce-."

"It was like … being shot," the man continued, rubbing the spot in the same movements they both still did – gentle massages, erasing and soothing. "A gun whose mouth was already hot, pressed against my shoulder and fired. Over, and over. But there's no blood. It hurts, and there's no blood." He looked up, eyes tracing over Bucky, and then Steve. "There should be blood, right?"

"Who was it?" Steve demanded, and again Bucky found himself gently pushing down on a fragile chest, keeping his the smaller man pinned to his bed. "Where are they?"

"Huh. I don't…" They all flinched at the sudden, violent burst of hysterical laughter that erupted from Banner's mouth. It sounded like Bucky's mouth had tasted for the past two days. "I don't _know. _He – he was supposed to meet me in the lobby, after my test, but I didn't… I didn't _see him_ and I was just … _fuck. _I was … _angry._ I didn't really look. Or ask. I just-."

_Wanted to break something,_ Bucky didn't say. _Wanted to hurt something. _

Steve was shaking under Bucky's hand, tense and visibly straining not to move against him, but Banner didn't finish his tirade, didn't offer more. Instead he dug into the pocket of his pants and pulled out the already familiar pack, ripping out a cigarette and lighting it before Bucky could blink. The bitter scent of nicotine filled the room within seconds, silence to accompany it outside of the hard breaths the man was sucking in.

And then, without warning, Banner's shoulders slumped, his body falling in on itself in crippled defeat that was painful in its truth to witness.

"… Can you smoke when you're on that?" It was wounded, tired, aimed toward Steve and the world as a whole. The pack waved out, the green lighter gleaming, and with a split second's hesitation Bucky let go of Steve and reached for both, raising his eyebrows as Banner's sorrowful eyes lifted to his own.

* * *

><p>"You <em>left him<em>."

There should have been a question mark in there, something to imply the disbelief that should have accompanied his admission, but there wasn't, and he flinched under the verbal lash of judgment.

Pepper Potts was nearly everything Tony needed in his life, with her sharp attentiveness and natural refusal to be intimidated by him; which apparently the universe agreed with, as he wore her name along his wrist like an always polished charm bracelet. At the time, he had felt the pang of disappointment that her name hadn't branded into his shoulder like a claim, because Pepper was competent, beautiful, _perfect._

Competent, beautiful, perfect Pepper, staring him down in quickly building fury.

"Alright, you sound mad," he observed cautiously, even if his chest punched lead to his heart at the reminder.

"I am mad!" She snapped, the heel of her stiletto clipping harshly as her foot stomped in her irritation. "What the hell, Tony? Can you imagine how he must feel, walking out there and you being _gone? After you promised to be there when he got out?"_

"To be honest, I'm trying not to."

And that was the truth. For three hours and seventeen minutes he had been staring at one display screen or another, bringing up the most complicated schematics of his largest unfinished projects, throwing his attention into equations and drafts and outcomes, trying to pull up images of futuristic blue instead of the skeletal, dying frame of his _soulmate_.

(Wide brown eyes and purple-bruised skin and warmth, warmth and _pain_, **Bruce**, on his shoulder-)

"You _promised him, Tony!"_ Pepper pushed in front of him, thrusting her tall frame between his face and the screen that JARVIS immediately closed down without prompting. Her blue eyes were raging, a firestorm echoed in the sunny red of her hair, and she really was gorgeous. Classic, lustful beauty, more vibrant, fuller, more _alive _than Bruce – fuck, why _couldn't it have been her?_

"I didn't want it to stop."

The anger in her eyes died away in a flash to confusion. "What?"

"It hurt, when we touched. Like it's supposed to. Hurt more than Afghanistan, than the reactor, than having that hole carved into my chest. Hurt like … all of it, everything, all the pain I've ever felt in my life wrapped into one moment. Burning into me. And I didn't want it to stop." He took in a shuddering breath, closing his eyes as her hands immediately came up to frame his face. She wasn't completely his, but she was his enough that even when she was angry, she was comforting him. Holding him. He _needed it._

"Because you want him, Tony," Pepper whispered, fingers moving to sweep through his hair. "You need him."

"He's dying_,_ Pep." Because that was the truth, too. Bruce … used that machine. That machine Tony built, to save lives it wasn't saving because they couldn't really be saved. A laugh bubbled up his throat like carbonation, spilling out in embarrassingly high-pitched gasps. Somewhere off to the side, he could hear Dum-E whirr in concern. "What, what am I supposed to do with that? He's _dying_, why would I bring him into my life if he's just going to leave it?"

He dipped his head into the crook of her neck and reveled in her sigh, in the weight of her head against his and the continued scratch of her nails.

"He already is, Tony. Whether you go to him or not, get to know him or not. You can't make that decision." She swiped her fingers across his shoulder, where the mark was, and he shuddered, pushing in closer. Fuck. "He's already here."

And didn't that suck?


End file.
